A memoirist’s guide to the role paper plays in our construction of ourselves
My Life in Paper: Adventures in Ephemera
Beth Kephart
Temple University Press, November 3, 2023
Paper both shapes and defines us. Baby books, diaries, sewing patterns, diplomas, resumes, letters, death certificates—we find our stories in them. My Life in Paper is Beth Kephart’s memoiristic exploration of the paper legacies we forge and leave.
Kephart’s obsession with paper began in the wake of her father’s death, when she began to handcraft books and make and marble paper in his memory. But it was when she read My Life with Paper, an autobiography by the late renowned paper hunter and historian Dard Hunter, that she felt she had found a kindred spirit, someone to whom she might address a series of one-sided letters about life and how we live it. Remembering and crafting, wanting and loving, doubting and forgetting—the spine and weave of My Life in Paper came into view.
Paper, for Kephart, provides proof of our yearning, proof of our failure, proof of the people who loved us and the people we have lost. It offers, too, a counterweight to the fickle state of memory.
My Life in Paper, illustrated by the author herself, is an intimate and poignant meditation on life’s most pressing questions.
Beth Kephart is an award-winning teacher, the co-founder of Juncture workshops, and a book artist. She is the award-winning author of more than three dozen books in multiple genres, including Wife | Daughter | Self: A Memoir in Essays, and We Are the Words: The Memoir Master Class. Her book Flow: The Life and Times of Philadelphia’s Schuylkill River (Temple) has become a regional classic. Visit her online at bethkephartbooks.com and bind-arts.com.
General Interest / Memoir / Philadelphia
November
Xxxx pages, 5 3/8 x 8 1/4”
Cloth ISBN 978-1-4399-2394-8 $30.00 £
AOI: Flow